Qualcomm redoubles effort to enter PC market with new chip

(Bloomberg) --Qualcomm Inc. announced a more powerful chip that the company hopes will help it break Intel Corp.’s stranglehold on the market for personal computer processors.

The Snapdragon 8cx series is Qualcomm’s first chip specifically designed for computers. It’s more powerful than previous smartphone-focused processors the company offered for the laptop market, Sanjay Mehta, a senior vice president at Qualcomm, said at an event in Hawaii on Thursday.

Qualcomm Centriq branding sits on a motherboard on display at the Qualcomm Inc. stand during day two of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018. At the wireless industry's biggest conference, more than 100,000 people are set to see the latest smartphones, artificial intelligence devices and autonomous drones exhibited by roughly 2,300 companies. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Simon Dawson/Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloom

Samsung Electronics Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd. have laptops that use a Qualcomm smartphone chip. The new, more capable processor should give PC makers better alternatives to Intel products, Qualcomm hopes.

Qualcomm’s pitch is that laptops using its chips will go days without needing to be plugged in, and will always be connected to the internet via cellular networks.